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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LindyBill who wrote (17721)	5/5/2006 2:39:50 AM
From: Metacomet	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 543062

It always amazes me how the Kool-Aid drinkers ignore the message and shoot at the messengers.

To: LindyBill who wrote (17721)	5/7/2006 12:00:41 PM
From: JohnM	Respond to of 543062

The problem is that Cole made an ass of himself. He responded to criticism with an "ad hominem" attack. Hitch cleaned his clock. No, the problem is the context behind all of it, all of which makes serious conversations about it here off the topic. But since you responded, I'm going to respond. There is a context here, a very serious context, one that is both symptom and cause of the presently sick state of political rhetoric in this country. Some right wing folk have concluded that they cannot deal with the substance of arguments put forth from commentators they consider "left" wing. So they engage in personal attacks. David Horowitz attacks faculty members as unpatriotic because they don't share his politics, more than vaguely McCarthyite, calling them traitors and other such fine words. Juan Cole has been one of the objects of those attacks. Daniel Pipes attacks any prominent commentator who offers criticisms of Israeli policies and labels them anti-semitic for doing so. He has so attacked Juan Cole. John Fund has used the Horowitz style to attack Cole because he is up for a faculty appointment at Yale. And now Christopher Hitchens joins in with stolen e-mails and "gotcha" style posting. He seems to have found, in a stolen e-mail, something said by Cole which contradicts Cole's other statements. Rather than address the substance of Cole's arguments, Hitchens does his little "gotcha" stuff. Personal attack again. It's irresponsible but, much worse, by attacking the person rather than arguing with the argument, it seriously corrodes our ability to disagree. Cole can hold his own in these debates but I'm not sufficiently interested to referee or announce winners and losers. In fact, I think this thread should simply skip the topic. If someone, some place else wishes to discuss it, so be it. But for us to get into it means we drop to that level. Who is the better personal attacker? Sorry, that doesn't interest me. The problem is Horowitz, Pipes, Fund, and Hitchens concluding this is a way to engage in serious policy discussions in the context of serious disagreements.